Wednesday, April 15, 2015

While
the corporate media, with its own conflict of interest stake in the
entrenched status quo, is always insistent that communism doesn't work
whenever issues within that structure arise, the same accusation would
never be leveled against capitalism. However much mass economic
suffering and imperialist military carnage that system as an always
assumed given, has generated at home and around the world.

And
though UK actor-comedian Russell Brand displays noble intentions in
fixing that broken entity with selective repairs in Michael
Winterbottom's documentary The Emperor's New Clothes, those simplistic
sentiments however subversive are, sorry to say, not noble enough.
Fashion statements aside, those emperor's duds, literally and
figuratively, need long overdue discarding - along with whatever
conniving and repressive emperor happens to be parading in them. Or not.

Borrowing
generously but substantially ineffectively from Michael Moore with a
bit of Brecht tossed in too, Brand mostly limits his bandit capitalism
critique to a single diluted reformist issue - corporate and billionaire
tax evasion. And tracing the economic dilemma back a mere seven decades
to what he terms as the decisive scourge - free market fundamentalism.
Which essentially lets off the hook any oligarchs exploiting and
massacring the masses for centuries - and all the related misery,
persecutions and assassinations in its wake into the present time.

What
does come to light incidentally at one point, is Brand admitting though
quickly brushing this particular personal detail aside, that he himself
is a member of the one percent. And actually, along with director
Winterbottom, no stranger to feeding at the lucrative trough of
Hollywood.

So what remains of this ideological
deviation, is a hunch that what both Brand and Winterbottom are after is
a call to fellow one percenters to pay their fair share of taxes as
they themselves do - rather than hiding billions in offshore accounts
around the planet. And that somehow the disclosed money will trickle
back into the system to provide for the poor.

Reality
check alert: This proposal sidesteps that other invisible entity along
with those regal garments in question - the elephant in the room known
as lobbyists. The ones who ultimately control those pseudo-democratic
capitalist governments through bribery, no matter who the masses vote
for. And who will always protect the robber barons and their riches, no
matter what arrangements have been made for hoarding their wealth.

So
what remains in The Emperor's New Clothes, aside from Brand as
anti-corporate court jester performing nonstop for an annoying nearly
two hour stretch - an occasional mildly amusing agitprop moment like the
masked billionaire fun bus aside - is essentially nothing new about
that monarch makeover. And unlike most such traditional fairy tales,
with conclusively no prospective happy ending in sight.

The Emperor's New Clothes is screening at the Tribeca Film Festival, which takes place
through April 26th throughout Manhattan. The Festival will highlight
hundreds of feature films, documentaries, shorts and special events. More information is online at Tribecafilm.com.